Sunday, September 2, 2018

Capitalism will die..Soon

Capitalism like all "ism" came with a promise and did serve the society well. It unleashed the human potential in numerous ways and led to many discoveries and innovations. The biggest of them being the large commercial behemoths which in turn became the vehicle of not only discoveries and innovations but making many things affordable and reachable to a large section of society. It also led to many innovations in medical space and which in turn has reflected in a much longer lifespan for humans.

However, in its pursuit of making bigger and greater somewhere, it lost the element for which it was intended. The humans. The capitalism has converted everything in this world as a sales and marketing target. It serves them well until they can serve the need for greater profitability. Beyond it, there is no interest in capitalism to even worry or take care of the fallen ones. If you have insurance and you have fallen ill, the insurance will take care of you, till it gets exhausted. Once it's exhausted, you are on your own. The capitalism will force you to liquidate yourself in a rather painful way. It will not mind to even put all of your future at stake in terms of credit lines. You might recover out of illness but you are not just a slave but a bonded slave of capitalism now all your life.

The other thing capitalism has done beautifully is put the future at stake to make the current balance sheets and profit and loss accounts look better. The marketing machinery is knife sharp that it cuts without making a hiss. People buy all the things including shoes, cars, houses of the size which they might not even need. And everything on a loan. It has painted a picture of opulence and satisfaction which can come only after one buys that big house. Even being happy has been defined beautifully in terms of the profile pictures and social media shares of how beautiful was the vacation. Behind those blankets are humans who are carrying their life as slaves of the capitalism.

One of the other shift that has happened with capitalism is the money power. The power has shifted from tangible assets to some numbers in the bank account. In earlier days, the power used to reside with the real assets. The muscle power, the ability to fight on the ground or to barter with a pound of butter in your hand was not a scalable model but treated each human in a dignified way. Capitalism has completely broken that trust network of the society. I have a pound of butter and you have a pound of sugar. However, we can only trade at a price which is artificially set by someone sitting in New York or one of those commodity exchanges. And a big part of the trade is the commission that brokers charge. The problem with the money power is now increased manifold by the capitalism taking control of the politics of the world. Make no mistake, the governments of today are run by capitalists. The puppets are the face. It has never happened in history and it did not happen in the initial years of capitalism. But it has now become a norm. Earlier King used to be a separate entity and for him, business and businessmen were one part of the kingdom like many. But now Kings are slaves of the money power and this is making the society more lopsided. With money power and the ability to influence policies and politics, the rich are becoming richer and poor are becoming poorer.